Terry Hershey

In This Issue:

• Just the Fishin'
• Featured Products
• Sabbath Moment
• Poems
• Words to Live By

FEATURE ARTICLE
by Terry Hershey

Just the Fishin'

When television came roaring in after the war (World War II) they did a little school survey asking children which they preferred and why—television or radio. And there was this 7-year-old boy who said he preferred radio “because the pictures were better.”
Alistair Cooke

God respects me when I work, but He loves me when I sing. Rabindranath Tagore

Those who dwell among the beauties and the mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.
Rachel Carson

This successful life we’re living, got us feuding like the Hatfield and McCoys.
Waylon Jennings

The biggest spiritual problem of our time is efficiency, work, pragmatism; by the time we keep the planet running there is little time and energy for anything else.
Thomas Merton

The tip becomes a journey after you have lost your luggage.
Anon

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what’s next or how. The moment you know, you begin to die a little.
Agnes de Mille

My heart is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.
St. Augustine

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
Albert Camus

“Was your trip successful?” he asked me, making polite conversation.

I am seldom rendered speechless. But for this inquiry, I had no words. His is not an unusual question. It is neither a trick nor a trap. Even so, this simple question is loaded with the self-conscious need for measurement that comes with our admittance ticket to this day and age.

Before we enjoy (or savor, or relish, or delight in, or submerse ourselves), we feel compelled to measure. We evaluate. We quantify. And we ask, what did we accomplish? Our value now tied to some unseen performance sheet.

So. Mentally, I rifle through the list (there is a file in my head, with possible answers to most questions, including those about successful trips, each response with it’s own question for evaluation), “How many people were in the audience?” “How many books did I sell?” “How many lives did I impact?” and more importantly, “How much money did I make?” I figure that three out of four isn’t bad. . .but who am I kidding. The fact that I give any emotional energy to such mental air hockey is proof enough that I need to take a deep breath and an afternoon nap in my garden.

I need the calming reassurance of John Ruskin, who reminded us (in 1853) that “the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless, peacocks and lilies for example.”

Ruskin’s philosophy is fleshed out in this story that Sue Monk Kidd tells about her Grandfather. “My grandfather,” she writes in When the Heart Waits, “was a lawyer, a judge, and a farmer. He was frequently busy and conquesting, but I remember also that he sometimes entered the golden moments of wu wei. He and I used to go fishing at one of the little ponds on his farm. He would sit and hold his cane pole over the water, becoming as still as the stumps that jutted up from the water. I usually tired of fishing fairly soon and went on to other things, like dandelions. One day having given up on the fishing, I was playing in his old black truck when I noticed that his fishing bait was still on the seat. I remember being surprised that my grandfather had been out fishing an hour or more without bait.

I grabbed the bait basket and raced over to him, “Grandaddy, how can you fish without bait?”

He tilted back his hat and smiled as if he had been caught in some delicious secret. “Well, sometimes it’s not the fish I’m after,” he said, it’s the fishing.”

This living smack-dab-in-the-middle-of, knee-deep in life, without anxiety about performance, goes against our grain. Because we live in a world that prefers the straight-line-perception of space and progress. Go from A to B to C. The closer to C, the closer to the goal. Arriving is about making forward progress. Further is better, further ahead, further up, further out. . .

At a conference recently, the brochure advertised that the purpose of the conference was to “fill us with knowledge, information and answers,” and I hoped, even accolades. Sue Monk Kidd’s grandfather would beg to differ.

Is it possible that instead of filling ourselves with more, we may be invited empty ourselves? To seek emptiness?

Is it possible that into that space (the receptive, slowed-down, just fishin’ space–the empty space) the infinite enters, that source of love beyond dogma. . .and most certainly, beyond measurement?

Is it possible that God’s grace is alive and well in those places where (by most measurements) we are sure to be considered utter failures?

My friend Andrea, who works with special needs children, reminded me that, “With my students, being realistic isn’t realistic. There is always a way to get something done. Untangle ropes by untying knots one at a time. If at first you don't succeed, try another way....the fall is a part of the dance. Limitations have within them the seeds of liberation.”

Ah, yes. When my son Zach was learning to ride a bike, he told me, “Dad, I learned how to ride my bike today. I started learning by falling down.”

Which is another way of saying that a planned journey is an oxymoron.

However. And this is the tough part. We don’t much care for empty space. So we fill it with frenetic activity, information, dogma, multi-tasking, diversions, posturing, and just plain old stuff. Lots of stuff.

Martha Stewart is audacious, if she is anything. The ad for her new book, promises: “One book, all the answers.” There you have it. And if we couple this compulsion for answers and accomplishment with our need for speed, we have home-made moonshine for craziness: a mixture of evisceration, dilution and fanfaronade. The result? My favorite book title: One-minute bedtime stories, (for parents, it says, who don’t have much time). A close second: Discover yourself in less than 30 minutes. (The good news here, is that if you don’t like what you discover, there’s plenty of time to get a second opinion.)

Two people are navigating traffic. The person driving, tense, pedal to the metal, changing lanes, speeds ahead.

“Are we late for something?” the other asks.

“No.” replies the driver.

“Then why are we in a hurry?”

The things that matter in a bad life, we know, are: gaining power over others, accumulating as much stuff as you can, getting revenge on your enemies (who are everywhere), and drugging yourself one way or another to forget the pain of not quite being human.
Gene Logsdon

I have no quarrel with anyone who is seeking meaning. Don’t we all? Who can forget VP candidate Stockdale’s lament in the 1992 debate, “Who am I, and what am I doing here?”

Even so, seeking meaning is a worthy and universal endeavor. Although, I’ve been asked (too often, by my way of thinking) whether I have read “The Purpose Driven Life”. I tell people I don’t mind the purpose part, but why does it have to be driven?

I’m writing at The Sleeping Lady Conference Center (www.sleepinglady.com). Outside my window aspen leaves, goldenrod yellow, float to the ground, paratroopers carried by the light breeze. It is the final week of October. The trees intuitively know it is time to let go, time to yield to the season, to the elements, chill, wind, and ice. There is a gust of wind and the picture from my window fills, a snowstorm of golden parachutes as if a colossus snow globe has been shaken by its creator.

Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried.
Thoreau

“Was your trip successful?”

My friend and I are driving through Stephen’s Pass in the Cascade Mountains, here in Washington state. We are days, maybe hours from a storm that will close this pass, or at least require chains. But on this weekend in October the sun bathes the landscape. Save for the asphalt we are on, the scene is unsullied by modern life.

Around each curve, a new vista. The Skykomish river, the vertebra for the highway, winds through this mountain pass. The energy of the river pulls us along, at times the river appears still, at times gurgling over rocks, and at times raging white water. In the river and alongside its banks granite boulders, some the size of a 1969 VW bus, making this scene look like some out-of-scale-model. Sometimes there is a single rock, and at other times boulders litter the river bed, creating catch basins for timbers–logs, stumps, downed trees–all now bleached by sun and water and time, from the distance of the elevated highway looking like an odd abandoned game of pickup sticks from gods at play.

On the mountain sides, a canvas of tranquilizing color. Aspen, cottonwood, Maple, mountain ash and Huckleberry.

My friend and I are listening to an Alan Jackson Gospel Hymns CD. Jackson is singing “The worlds thy hand has made. . .” Our conversation slows. Any explanation of what we see is rendered mute.

Jazz artist Miles Davis talked about his music saying that he paid attention to the pauses between the notes.

Our incessant need for commentary or assessment dulls, because we are, in effect, trying to make civilized what is by nature uncivilized. It is what primitive people knew:

Awe is not to be tamed.
You are silent.
You bow.
And you are present.

Someone said that when we lose awe, we replace it with religion.

“Was your trip successful?”

A couple weeks ago I visited Luckenbach, Texas.

For Willie fans, this is Mecca. You know, with Waylon and Willie and the boys. . .

Here the motto is “Everybody is somebody in Luckenbach.” And I admit it. It doesn’t get much better than this. So you’ll need to indulge me for just a spell. I sat where Willie sat. Sipped a beer. And couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

They say around Luckenbach that you can't find a place more laid-back without being unconscious. The old general store is still there, established in 1849. The siding on the old building has been carved and marked by thousands of pilgrims, with sharpie or knife. Next to an old-fashioned Drink bubble up sign, I read, in big black ink that Jesus is Lord. And that Sharon was here. And just about every other name you can think of. Many combined with other names and big hearts and a date. I guess in this laid back environment the walls of the heart soften, and this old siding (and bench and door) has witnessed a whole slew of professions, fueled by Eros, devotion and enchantment. My favorite: North Austin Slim loves Cookie Dough.

“It’s like living in a book,” Kathy Bauer told us. She sits behind the counter in the country store wearing her cowboy hat, strumming her guitar and singing “Bandera Cowboy,” a song that she has just written and she wants to record on her upcoming CD. It’s got just the right mixture of melancholy and passion. And while she sang, I practiced a little two-step on the old wood plank floor, plum-tickled to be alive.

Now if someone asks me about the success of my trip or endeavor, I tell them to read Mary Oliver. After that, we’ll have something to talk about.

Messenger

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—

equal seeker of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished…

Mary Oliver

Jesus wasn’t immune to this scrutiny regarding performance. He stood before Herod, who was happy to see Jesus, because he was expecting Jesus to work a miracle. So he plied Jesus with questions, including the great transliteration in the play Jesus Christ Superstar, “Jesus, prove to me that you’re no fool, tiptoe across my swimming pool.” In other words, “Impress me!” It’s what we get every day. Come on, impress me! Are you somebody?

And Jesus’ response to Herod? Nada. Zero. Silence. Why? When you know who you are, inside, you don’t need to impress anyone. When you know that your identity is held gently and firmly in the hands of a loving and faithful Creator, even, and especially in those empty spaces, you don’t need to jump hoops for anyone.

Intelligence happens when you quit trying to be smart.

A sense of self appears when you no longer have a need to be somebody.

Transcendence arrives when you embrace the life that is given.

Holiness happens when you give up frenetic striving.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver